Features

The Iraq Study Group report is a stunning rebuke of Bush's Iraq policy. But its central premise--that the US can support the nonexistent Iraqi government and bolster its viciously sectarian armed forces--is fatally flawed.

The foreign policy establishment knows the Iraq War is lost, but the
search for an acceptable exit strategy has only just begun.

The Iraq Study Group report comes too late for the 600,000 people who died in carnage that is likely to worsen. It won't satisfy the antiwar movement because it sets no timetable for withdrawal. But it does mark the beginning of the end of America's criminal war of aggression.

Beyoncé Knowles's sexed-up club jam B'Day is also an odd, urgent, dissonant and disruptive personal and political statement.

Stuart Klawans reviews Fast Food Nation, a film that aspires to activism as it undermines its own anticorporate message.

Two new books explore fundamental Palestinian and Israeli concerns: The Iron Cage by Rashid Khalidi considers the Palestinians' failure to achieve sovereignty, and One Country by Ali Abunimah puts forth a moral case for binationalism.